Bad Luck
by Delilah Draken
Summary: Sometimes, when you play with fire, it doesn't burn you. It freezes your soul and paralyses your heart.
1. I

**Title:** Bad Luck  
**Author:** Delilah Draken  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Fandom:** Star Wars (ANH, ESP, ROTJ)  
**Pairing(s):** n/a (at the moment)  
**Status:** Work In Progress  
**Started:** August 05, 2005 – 08.21 hrs  
**Disclaimer:** The stories are mine. All the rest - characters and locations you've heard of in TV shows, movies, books etc - belong to their respective owners. I am just borrowing them.  
**Summary:** Sometimes, when you play with fire, it doesn't burn you. It freezes your soul and paralyses your heart.

_Inversion Challenge_

Luke and Vader trade bodies. This can be at any time in the trilogy or before and can be because of an alien artifact/weird occurrence/the Force, whatever. The two characters have to learn to live each others lives plausibly until they can switch back.

Requirements  
1. Must be L/V (of course)  
2. Must contain the line, "Just remember, I can do just as much damage here as you can do there."  
3. Must contain the line, "Give me one good reason not to kill you where you stand".  
4. Must have at least one scene where Luke has to get used to walking with a cape. 

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**Bad Luck **

by  
Delilah Draken 

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- I - 

Cold. So terribly cold. I don't like the cold. Why is it so cold? My angel's eyes are never cold. He repeats the words, silently, within his memories' best guarded secrets, over and over again, makes them his own, his only thought, his black beacon in a nightmare of white. Slowly, painfully he sets step after step into the freezing snow, battles the icy wind that attempts to conquer his lone, broken body, and tries to ignore the voice of an old, long dead friend, enemy, whatever telling him to visit a myth on a world of slimy mud and biting insects.

The voice is insistent, following him around, finally using the shadow of a once youthful face to make him look up, to see the apparition. He sees the ghost, smiles to himself that now he really has lost his mind and turns away, still ignoring the one-sided conversation. He doesn't see any reason to listen, to follow a phantom's orders, as the message is not for him; but for the boy, his angel's little darling heir, a dream that was never allowed to become reality.

Hours, minutes, days fly by, frozen moments eaten by the creature clad in ivory silk and breathing agony. Were he still able to produce the sound, a chuckle would be heard, amusement over bad metaphors and silly poetic justice. But only silence surrounds him, a soundless void only disturbed by the howling wind slicing at his skin. And still he walks on, always moving, never resting, to a place he does not know where, but hopes it will be warm, warm, warm, better than here.

Matter reigns over mind, letting him lose the tiny ounce of stubborn determination that made him cross this far an ocean of ice. With an exhausted sigh he sinks into the welcoming snow, cherishes the chance to rest, to sleep and be no more. Let them find his body, let them find the remains of a once proud man and wonder who he was, he who was insane enough to risk a blizzard without protection. His epitaph will read 'All honour to him, defender of shadows, warrior of darkness, child of the desert. In legends, he will survive, he who was called Darth Vader'. The traditional Tatooine form of address elegantly engraved in silver nightstone to be a memory, a tale to be remembered, to be told for generations to come, for there is no immortality without someone to sing your song, to write your story and create a fantasy of hero's death and lost love.

How ironic then, the great joke of the universe, that the stones will never learn his name. Here he is - monster, nightmare given flesh, betrayer of love freely given - and dreams of an afterlife as a cherished whisper in the eternal dunes. How pathetic to wish for what can never be. How dreadfully delusional to even dare to think of such an heresy.

It hurts to keep his eyes open, to blink away the tiny icicles that are growing on his lashes. It hurts for it is necessary. There never was a dunes' child who didn't look Death in the eye, who didn't await the goddess with open arms and a blade to fight, who wasn't ready for the dance. In Death's arms there is no light and no cold, only shadows and the warmth of a mother's womb. But is this Death he sees, is that the last lover gliding on black wings to bring him back his angel for a final kiss good bye? He is not sure, imagination and reality fighting for supremacy, what it is his eyes show him, if his beloved lady of the green fields kneels beside him, his hand touching her face with adoring devotion. In the end, it doesn't matter whose lips he kisses with his last breath, he doesn't care any more because a dying man's dream is a holy thing and to break the illusion is a crime worth a million lifetimes of pain and despair. 


	2. II

- II -

There is an irrational fear within his veins, a certain distrust, as if he is only waiting for the trap to close, for the monster to eat him. Whenever the word medic is mentioned in a conversation, an iron fist demands obedience by throttling the last shreds of dignity out of him and leaves his skin bathed in cold sweat. He doesn't know why he reacts this way, why he can't even lay eyes on one of the blue-green uniformed officers of the Medical Corps without looking for an easy escape route. He only knows that the nightmares, these memories he is sure to never have lived through, were his companions since early childhood. That the dreams of pain and torture, of losing more and more of his humanity due to well meaning surgeon hands, will never end, will only become more pronounced as his body grows older and more dependent on outside help to survive.

And now here he lies, strapped to a medical bed, with uncountable instruments connected to his body, the rhythmic whirring and beeping and shish-hush-shish of an artificial respirator driving him crazy with the wish to cover his ears, to shut out the noise, to make it stop hurting so much. His fingers itch to scratch away the needles entering his skin, to rip out all that doesn't belong inside of him, but someone, probably a nurse controlling the machines surrounding him, had the ridiculously idiotic idea to immobilize his hands, to keep him from feeling anything under his elbows.

There are voices in the room, hushed as if they don't want to disturb his rest, whispering in a tone that borders on fear or a healthy dose of respect when confronted with the consequences of them waking the patient. He listens to them, silently cursing whatever revenging deity deemed it necessary to put him in this hellish place, not caring enough to move his head and open his eyes to see who these two men discussing the fate of the galaxy are.

"Do they know what is wrong with him?" one asks, a slight accent in his vowels, like he was raised on one of the Core Worlds, like someone who went to boarding school on Coruscant. Nobody, he thinks, in the Rebellion talks like that, they all try to mask their high education if possible, as if to admit one's parents were rich enough to sent them to the Glass Towers for school is a crime.

"No." comes the answer, in the clipped tones of one who was raised in the military, of one who is used to being obeyed, to being in command, no breath wasted on unnecessary speeches. Old soldier blood, comes to mind, at least in the fifth generation. "They 'believe' it is his implants, some glitch in the programming." A sigh follows, the tired sound of one who spent hours, if not days, pacing in front of a sick bed. "But they don't know for sure, Piett. They just don't know."

The conversation continues, but the two men leave the room, leave him alone in this prison of sterility and imagined betrayal, like everyone will leave him in the end. There is not much to do when one is forced to lie still, not allowed to move enough to get the cramps out of muscles that scream for activity; so he lets his mind wander, lets it show him the faces of men he never met before. Sometimes, when that happens, he hears the name of some Imperial officer, sees some picture, and he knows, remembers who they were, what they did to become what they are now.

Once upon a time, before he got sucked into these games of Rebellion and Evil Establishment, it once disturbed him that he knows probably more about the Imperial High Court than those entering it every day, but not any more. He got used to it, to seeing faces, weapons, death and destruction in his dreams, memories of a life he never lived, at least when visions of a cold, calculating mind enter his head there aren't any nightmares about being slices into tiny bits by medical droids. For that he will have to thank whomever is playing with his sanity, if for nothing else.

One of those much despised contraptions connected to his left arm must have administered some kind of tranquillizer, the slightly colder fluid entering his bloodstream accompanied by the type of pressure one really doesn't want to contemplate, bringing him before the gates of dreamscape. He shrugs mentally and enjoys the ride to places unknown, worlds never seen, a milky film touching all his thoughts and painting them again in colours of black and crimson, comforting him with the calm interior of a warrior's heart.

The last thing he hears before sleep consumes him is the silent whispering of the dunes, their queen singing the lives of her heirs. 


	3. III

- III -

One of those times he will get his hands on a medic and show them exactly how much appreciated their services are. A cracked bone here, a nice invading bit of metal there, let them feel how much it hurts to be at their tender mercies, how brilliant the pain when all the anaesthetics pumped into your nerves are nothing but a hopeful yearning in a in destroyed body. Of course, he will never do it. Were he to act on his instincts in this case, there wouldn't be any doctors to sew him together again after a particularly damaging meeting with his enemies, or employer. And he has learned to accept that some things cannot be changed, cannot be avoided despite what one desires, like love and hate, life and death or his relationship with the Medical Corps, despicable creatures that they are.

The room reeks of bacta, the sickly sweet odour of the 'help all-heal all' salve saturating both his clothes and skin, bringing him to the realization that he was probably put into a bath with the stuff to reach all those little crevices that can't be reached any other way. How rejuvenatingly humiliating, to swim in a tank surrounded by slightly pink-blue fluid, all his secrets in the open for the masses to gaff at. He shudders at the thought, instantly denying it's very existence. It is better to not think about some things, to just forget they ever happened.

A door opens. Now there begins the obligatory parade of commanding officers giving their well wishes to the recuperating demon they all love to hate, their fear tainting the atmosphere with its bleak taste. But it is neither the pacifistic captain of his Grey Lady, nor the sometimes too logical general who prides himself with occupying quarters on the same deck as Her Lady's Prince who enters. No, much to his dismay, it is a girl-child playing at being the great leader of a so-called revolution and a captain who sacrificed a promising career in the navy for the life of a lowly smuggler.

A smile tucks at his lips, sign of his amusement when confronted with cosmic comedy. Or is it maybe a smirk? It doesn't matter what mien is shown on his face as it cannot be seen anyway. Or can it? Slowly, prudent of the truth he already knows, his hands rise to his head, touch it, learn what is to see. No, no, no, that cannot be, only a play of his mind, nothing more, nothing less. But he cannot fight the idea that something strange is happening. Why else would he be here, imprisoned to the barely full-grown body of a child that doesn't exist, cannot have survived because then all he did would be for nothing, only a futile fantasy in the heart of an old dragon.

"We were worried about you, Luke." Soft words, spoken by a girl who, despite what fate handed to her, still believes in the dreams of her youth, still looks for the one knight, the perfect hero to take her away from all the monuments of kingdoms past that are crumbling to dust around her, her tiny hands fighting, bleeding to build the old palace anew though only ruins remain. But of course, there aren't knights any more, only warriors in shining armour fighting for what they believe in. The times of ascetic warrior monks playing at heroics and stealing the hearts of innocent children, who fall in love with them because they are safe, totally safe for they would never touch what they desire, are long gone, vanished into the mists of legend.

And it is better they stay gone, he thinks with a touch of bitterness. Better the universe forgets them, lets them enter into the realm of fairy tale.

Elegant fingers pry his hands away from his face, turn his head so that his eyes may be searched by dark crystals burning with a fire he once cherished, would have died, killed for if only the fates had allowed for more time, just a little bit more time to finish his plans. Old pain, guilt of the guilty, anger fuelling a dead soul to heights of anguish, must have been creeping behind the masks he wears, for the princess lets go as if burned and runs out of the room, leaving MedBay in wonder about what finally managed to get under her skin, to make her react with true emotion and not the methodical emptiness she showed since the destruction of her crown world.

"Was that really necessary?" Whispered words out of the mouth of a man he once trusted with his life, no, his soul.

Of course, it was not. Not even a monster can control everything. As it is, what scared the princess was a totally involuntary reaction. But he will not tell, will never let anyone understand what goes on behind eyes that are eternally hidden in the shadow of a nightmare's face.

"She will never love you." His words sound strange, like the vocal cords wish to produce a tone far higher than what his brain orders them to create. The rough voice of someone who hasn't spoken for a long time and now tries to imitate a Hutt.

The captain only looks at him as if he has lost his mind. A valid question, one he has asked himself often enough, but sadly was always forced to answer in the negative. No, not insane, never that, though a certified suicidal megalomaniac with a taste for elaborate torture he definitely is.

"Lord Ash of Yinchorr told you that while we were visiting the training facilities, if I remember right. And you know I do, Solo." Recognition is evident in the former flight-squad captain as he levels his weapon at the recuperating man in front of him.

"Give me one good reason not to kill you where you stand." The patient only looks down at himself, sitting quite comfortable with the help of a raised cushion. "Sit." Solo corrects his mistake."

"Because you like me." comes as answer from the seated man. "Because, despite the fact that you fear me more than death, you once trusted me enough to call me 'friend'." 


End file.
